"Portrait of a Man with a Pink"Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Pasted into the
Glessners’ scrapbook is an article from the Chicago
Tribune dated December 28, 1913 entitled “Art Masterpiece Discovered Here.” Written by Harriet Monroe, the article
relates the story of an art expert visiting the Art Institute of Chicago and
identifying a previously unattributed portrait as the work of the 15th
century painter Hans Memling. The
significance to the Glessners lies in the fact that John J. Glessner was the
donor of the artwork. However, the story
and true identity of the artist are more complicated.

The portrait,
entitled “Portrait of a Man with a Pink” was acquired by Art Institute
president Charles L. Hutchinson in June 1890 through the prominent Paris art
dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Hutchinson and
his good friend Martin A. Ryerson (a founding trustee of the Art Institute) had
travelled to Europe that summer, returning with an important collection of
Dutch masterworks including the portrait, for which he paid 13,000 francs. It was first put on public display in Chicago
on November 8, 1890 according to a Tribune
article “At the Art Institute”:

“The old paintings by Dutch masters which
were purchased last summer for the Art Institute by Messrs. Hutchinson and
Ryerson were shown yesterday afternoon to the members of the press and will be
exhibited this evening, at the reception which inaugurates the present season,
to the members of the institute, being afterwards accessible to the general
public.

“A view of the paintings confirms the
impression of their importance already gained from the inspection of
photographs and conversations with officers of the institute. They are unquestionably the most
representative collection of pictures by the old Dutch masters ever brought to
this country, embracing many works of the first importance, which the great
European museums would be proud to possess and have indeed tried to
secure. They give to Chicago the
supremacy among American cities in this department, and open for our students
of art a vast field of profitable study.
Thus the thanks of the community are due to the gentlemen who so
promptly and with such admirable public spirit availed themselves of a unique
opportunity.”

1890 illustration from the Chicago Tribune

The collection
of paintings included works by Van Dyck, Hals, and Rubens, as well as the
iconic Rembrandt painting, “Young Woman at an Open Half-Door.” Of the “Portrait of a Man with a Pink,” the
article related:

“The last of the portraits to be noticed
is also the smallest . . . and the oldest, belonging to the sixteenth century.
. . This is the panel by the German master Holbein, which is a good example of
the rigid, literal, sculpturesque style of Henry the Eight’s court painter,
whose portraits form an intimately faithful historical gallery of that dramatic
epoch. His present subject might have
been molded in copper, so dark is his color, or made of leather, so leathery is
his skin. But the face is unmistakably,
humanly true; one does not doubt this man’s existence for an instant or miss
one note of his rather strenuous character.”

When Hutchinson
acquired the portrait, he believed it to be a work of the great German portraitist
Hans Holbein the Younger, who by the mid-1530s had been appointed the “King’s
Painter” to King Henry VIII, chronicling the English court during that
turbulent period. Hutchinson appealed to
his friends to cover the cost of the significant collection of Dutch artworks
he acquired and, in 1894, John Glessner retroactively provided the gift for the
Holbein portrait.

However, at some
point, the attribution of the painting as the work of Holbein was put aside,
and by the early 1900s, the painting was described as the work of an “unknown
Flemish Master.” That changed in 1913
when Dr. Abraham Bredius, director of The Hague Museum, visited the Art
Institute as part of a tour studying Dutch paintings in American collections,
primarily the Rembrandts. The 1913 Tribune article says of his discovery:

“Dr. Bredius’ opinion enriches the institute
collection by a Memling portrait. The ‘Portrait
of a Man,’ hitherto ascribed to an ‘unknown Flemish master,’ which was
presented to the institute nearly twenty years ago by John J. Glessner, is
declared to be an unusually fine example of the work in portraiture of Hans
Memling, the great Flemish master, who died in Bruges about 1492. The picture is worth, therefore, many times
the $4,000 which Mr. Glessner paid for it.”

1913 illustration from the Chicago Tribune

The Memling
attribution was short lived. The
painting was photographed by Braun and reproduced by Max Friedlander in the second
edition of his volume From Jan van Eyck
to Bruegel, published in 1921. It
was Friedlander, generally recognized as the greatest expert of Dutch and German
paintings, who identified the portrait as the work of Quentin Massys.

Quentin Massys
(1466-1530) was a Flemish painter and one of the founders of the Antwerp
school. The portrait, an oil on panel measuring 11 by 17 inches, was painted between 1500 and 1510. As noted in the permanent
collection label for the portrait:

“In the early 16th century,
Antwerp experienced remarkable growth as a commercial center, and Quentin
Massys was one of the most important and innovative of its many painters. In this relatively early and rather damaged
portrait, he followed 15th-century tradition by employing an
immobile pose, barely allowing his subject’s hands to appear above the sill of
the picture frame. Yet Massys developed
a distinctive and nuanced manner of modeling the face, which here conveys a
strong sense of individual character.
The pink, or carnation, held by the sitter could refer to matrimony or
to Christ’s incarnation.”

Regardless of
the controversy over who painted the portrait, it has been recognized as an
important work at the Art Institute since the 1890s, and has been included in
many catalogues of the collection. It
was part of the Art Institute exhibition at A Century of Progress in both 1933
and 1934, and travelled to exhibits in Antwerp and New York. Although it is the only work by Massys at the
Art Institute, it is not currently on exhibit, possibly due to its somewhat
compromised condition. It is hoped,
however, that this significant donation to the collection by John J. Glessner
will once again be put on public display for all to enjoy.